


Guard Against the Thunderstorm

by Chash



Series: Better Ways to Be Alive [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Minor Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 06:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16341317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: Clarke knew a lot of things about raising Madi would be tough. She knew the ordinary problems with taking on an older kid who might not be enthused about her as a guardian (see: Bellamy and Octavia), and she had some idea of the more unique problems she'd be dealing with teaching Madi about her heritage.And in a lot of ways, it's not as bad as she thought. It's just that she still doesn't feel like she has any idea what she's doing.





	Guard Against the Thunderstorm

**Author's Note:**

> There will definitely be more parts. I have no idea how many. We're just winging this here friends.

"If you're going to summon rain, can you not do it on Saturdays? You drenched everyone at the farmer's market."

Clarke spares a glance as Bellamy flops down on the couch, looking fairly dry himself, and not terribly bothered by the storm hitting, and then refocuses on her laptop. "Aren't you under a tent?"

"I am, my customers aren't."

"So you only sold like a hundred fancy wooden bowls?"

"Fuck, I wish. My best days I usually sell like twenty. I assume this was you telling Madi?"

She finally turns her attention fully away from the computer to look at him. "Yeah, it was."

"And?"

"I think it went well. She believed me, I'm pretty sure. She wants to learn. And it felt like--I think it helped? She seemed more comfortable with me once she knew why I knew about her."

"So where is she?"

"Out with Jordan and Gaia."

"Do you think she'll tell them?"

"Not yet. Maybe when she gets powers of her own, but it's not like she's exactly big on trust."

He grins. "You think either of them have powers to hide? Maybe they'll all get to try to hide from each other for a few years."

Clarke smiles too. She and Bellamy had several summers of being just a little off, of butting heads and suspecting each other of undefined sketchiness before she admitted she needed his help with an animal problem. And then she brought him home to her grandmother after, who acted like she'd always known and was just waiting for Clarke to figure it out.

Clarke's about fifty-fifty for whether or not she really _did_ know, these days. He didn't have an army of cats following him around back then--no pets at all, since his mother didn't like them--and while kids talked about how he was good with hurt animals, adults never did. And now that she's an adult herself, she knows how much they have to pretend to know what's going on. It felt like Gram was all-powerful and all-knowing, but she was mostly a clever old woman who knew better than to show weakness. 

Even with all her faults, Clarke misses her every day.

"Did you tell her about me?" Bellamy asks.

"Obviously. You make it so much more believable."

"Yeah, even some of the grown ups think I'm magic."

She frowns. "Where is your entourage, anyway?"

"I brought the dog, so the cats are sulking. He's in the yard hanging out with the chickens."

"Am I doing the right thing?"

Bellamy knows her well enough to not think the question came out of nowhere, especially since it's far from the first time she's asked. These last few months, it feels like all she's done is made him tell her she's doing a good job. But he made her do that when he had Octavia, too. Fair is fair.

"You are," he says. "Is there something more specific you want to check on?"

"I was writing up lesson plans."

A broad grin breaks out on his face. "Fuck, I love you," he says, in that easy, absent way that makes her ache so deep she shouldn't enjoy it. But it's her favorite thing to hear, even as it breaks her heart.

Being in love with Bellamy in some small part of her brain was easy when she didn't see him often. It didn't have to be a big deal. And she thought once she was here, it would go away.

She always thinks it's going to go away, and she's always wrong.

"Shut up," she says.

He drags himself off the couch and comes to lean over her shoulder. "You have _objectives_. Did you google and find a template for this?"

"What else was I supposed to do?" she asks, taking refuge in the familiar faux outrage to escape from warmer feelings.

"Yeah, this was your only option. You're going to be fine, Clarke," he adds, pitching his voice low and gentle. "You've got this."

"But what if I don't? If there are other witches in the family, I don't know about them. If there are other witches in the _world_ , I don't know. I've never taught anyone and if I fuck it up, I don't have anyone--"

The weight of his hand on her shoulder stops the flow of words. "You have me," he says. "I didn't have anyone to teach me except your grandmother and I turned out fine, right?"

"You could be better."

"Yeah, but that's basic personality defects."

She lets herself lean into his hand, just breathing for a long minute. It _does_ make her feel better, although the comfort is mingled with guilt for not thinking to worry about him in the first place. All that Bellamy knows about his family and his powers is guesswork, and even Gram couldn't help that much. His mother and his sister have no strong affinity for animals, show no signs of magic, and no one on his mother's side of his family has ever mentioned him or approached him. So if his powers are genetic, like hers, they're on his mysterious father's side, and Clarke knows that's something that still aches, the not knowing. It would ache even without the magic, but with it is worse.

"Sorry," she says, soft. "I didn't mean to--"

"I know. I'm not mad. Just reminding you, Madi's got you. And me. That's more than either of us had. Just because it feels like Gram was an expert, it doesn't mean she was. She was just doing her best, like we will be."

"Which is why I'm doing lesson plans."

"And why I'm giving you a cat."

She frowns. "I don't want a cat, I keep telling you."

"You think cats are a stereotype, that's not the same as not wanting one."

"I think I come across as enough of a witch without a cat."

"So why not just have a cat? It's for Madi, if that makes you feel better. She already named it and everything."

That's actually kind of encouraging. "Really?"

"Yeah. I still haven't totally convinced her to take it, but I'm going to. It's hard to resist a kitten, and Cucurbita likes her."

She snorts. "That name is bigger than the kitten."

"Like I said, Madi picked it."

"With no help from you, I'm sure."

"She asked me what Latin for _pumpkin_ was, what was I supposed to do? Not tell her?"

She straightens, moving away from him, and he takes his hand off her shoulder, helping to put distance between them. "You guys seem to be getting along," she observes, light.

"I have kittens, it's an easy sell. You guys are going to get there, Clarke."

"I know." She manages a smile. "Giving Madi a kitten isn't actually less subtle than giving me one, you know. In terms of rumors about us being witches."

"Gaia and Jordan are getting kittens too, I already checked with Indra and Monty. So it's less Madi getting a kitten and more her and her friends all getting kittens."

"For someone who spends half his time talking about how his cats are assholes, you're really into making other people take cats."

"Misery loves company. Besides, I call you an asshole all the time and I like you."

 _You love me_ , she thinks, involuntary. "How long before the kittens are ready to leave?"

"Another month or so."

"I guess we could probably take one."

"I thought so." He pulls a chair up next to the computer. "Show me the lesson plans," he says, and Clarke moves over to make room for him to see the screen.

He's right; she's not on her own in this. They're going to figure it out.

*

"So, can you actually talk to animals or what?"

Bellamy glances over his shoulder at Madi, sitting at the table and swinging her legs as Bellamy and Clarke work on dinner. "Not like you're thinking."

"How do you think I'm thinking?"

"They're not humans, so even though I can understand them, we aren't really speaking the same language. I can explain stuff like--" He gestures vaguely. "The vet will be done in this long, here's what they're doing to you, it's going to hurt. But we don't have deep conversations or anything. And they still don't really get why they need the vet, they just put up with it because I ask them to and tell them they'll get treats later."

Madi nods. "So, do they like you because you can talk to them, or is that separate?"

"Animals like me before they know I can communicate with them," he says. "But they like me even more after."

"You definitely got the cooler powers," she says, only a little petulant.

"You don't even know what you can do yet," Clarke protests. "There's some cool stuff."

"Like what?"

It's a hard question to answer less because it's false and more because Clarke didn't really appreciate her powers at Madi's age either. She was thinking of witches like in _Harry Potter_ , when, according to Bellamy, she's more of a Terry Pratchett witch.

"Clarke can't cook," Bellamy puts in. "The only reason her food is edible is that she's a witch."

"How does being a witch help?"

She shoots Bellamy a quick scowl, but it's not as if he's _wrong_. "I make charms," she explains. "They're all over the house, I'll show you later. In the kitchen, I have ones to keep food from burning, to keep it from getting overseasoned, stuff like that."

"We tried to teach her to just cook well, but that didn't work," Bellamy says.

Madi is thinking so hard she's practically glaring a hole in the table. "How?"

"How what?"

"How does the charm do that? Does it take the stuff off the stove when it's burning, or does it protect it from getting hotter or what? And how does it know what _burned_ is? Or overseasoned? If I like more salt and you like less, how can it do it right for both of us?"

Clarke and Bellamy exchange a smile. She hadn't been planning to turn this into a lesson, doesn't have any explanations ready. But Madi sometimes feels as if she's _made_ of questions; Clarke can't expect her to only want to learn when she thinks she's teaching. Especially not on the first day.

"Witch magic is--like a friend," Clarke says, slow. It's how Gram explained it to her, all those years ago. "It's not like you say the words and something happens out of nowhere. What you're doing is learning how to communicate with something that can think. So when I did the rain trick today, I was telling my magic I needed it to make it rain for a little while, and my magic did that for me."

"The charms are more like signs," Bellamy adds. "Like the reminders to wash your hands in the bathroom. It's always there making the request. But the magic isn't a hammer, it's--a friend, like Clarke said."

"How do you know?" Madi asks. "You're not a witch."

"Because I don't know where my powers came from, so Gram taught me too. It's not the same, but it was good to have something to compare to what I did."

"Bellamy learned to communicate with animals and I learned to communicate with my magic. We both had to figure out their languages."

"So your magic learns how much salt you like? How do you tell it? Do you have to do a spell that's like, _I like my steak medium rare, don't cook it so long_?"

Trying to explain magic was the part of taking Madi on that Clarke worried about most. Her grandmother resorted to _because that's how it is_ a lot, and while it never satisfied Clarke, she didn't really have any other resources to draw on. She and Bellamy would go to the library on free afternoons and read every book they could about magic, fitting pieces of fantasy folklore together like they were doing a puzzle, trying to find the combination that would be _theirs_.

So she doesn't tell Madi she has all the answers, doesn't pretend that she, with all her charms and potions and friendly magic, cooks nearly as well as Bellamy does with his years of practice. She tells Madi about the ways it went wrong and the ways she and Gram figured out to fine tune, how her magic has grown to understand that she overestimates the amount of salt she wants and underestimates pepper. She shows her the way the meat won't cook after a certain point, even if she can't explain _how_ it stops cooking, and they get sidetracked from dinner doing experiments to see how much salt they can put into something before it stops tasting saltier, and whether or not all of them agree that's the correct amount of salt.

They do the dishes together once they have managed to eat, and that one Madi doesn't appreciate. "Can't the magic help?"

"It helps," says Clarke. She flips through the charm cards that Madi insisted on seeing and finds the ones relating to dishes. "The water won't burn our hands, and nothing sticks to the plates."

"But you still need to invest in a dishwasher," Bellamy grumbles. "I know you can afford it."

"It's on my list of home improvements. You know Gram didn't believe in them."

"Gram thought that any technology that made life easier was cheating. She didn't have a fridge."

Clarke flicks some water at him. "Why are you acting like that's an argument? We're on the same side here. I had to buy so much shit. A dishwasher is next, but I'd rather handwash plates than clothes."

"She didn't have a _fridge_?" Madi asks, with appropriate horror. "Did she have a charm to keep her food cold?"

"I'm going to take off before you explain this," Bellamy says, snapping his fingers for Maximus. The dog had been sleeping in the corner, but perks up at the sound and trots over. "I love Gram stories but I have kittens to check on."

The happy bubble of the evening doesn't pop, but it does shrink, the way Clarke's world always does when Bellamy leaves it. It wasn't always like this, she knows, but it has been since she moved back, since she realized how much better it was being with him than anyone else.

Since she realized she was _in_ love with him, basically. It's not her favorite thing.

"You don't have to rub it in our faces that you have kittens and we don't," she says, and he smirks.

"If you want me to think you don't want a kitten, you have to stop saying stuff like that. Call me if you're doing any cool witch stuff."

"Will do. Later."

It shouldn't feel awkward to be left alone with Madi, but it's only been a week, and nights are hardest. This seems like the time when they should be learning to be a family, and she doesn't know how to do that.

"I can show you Gram's washboard," she offers. "When I was little she actually made me take clothes down to the river because she said it built character. But my dad told me that they had a washing machine when he was a kid, so she must have gotten rid of it after he moved out and she started having a lot less laundry."

"Did your dad know that his mom was a witch?" Madi asks, sounding curious.

"No. She had two boys and a girl and none of them had any powers. And I was the only one of her grandchildren, too. It's not that common, I don't think."

"Just girls?"

"Yeah. Although I wonder--" Madi looks at her, and she smiles. "I don't know if it's genetic. Like--Bellamy's kittens. The way cat genetics work, almost all tortoiseshell cats are female. But I don't know if the magic is science or, well, magic. Like--is it people who were assigned female at birth, or people who identify as female? Honestly, I don't know that much more about it than you do. Gram wasn't great with theory questions. She just knew what her aunt passed down to her, and she didn't ask a lot of questions about why, so she didn't think I should either."

"So you don't know why."

"Not really. But I'd like to, so we can try to figure it out."

"How do you know I'm a witch?" she finally asks. "How can you tell? You never even met me."

"Gram was pretty sure. She had all this stuff about star charts and what the moon was like when you were born. I didn't really believe her. But she told me what to look for once I took you in."

"And?"

Clarke bites the corner of her mouth. "You're left-handed, that's one thing. Cats like you, Bellamy helped out with that one. And you have a pattern of freckles that looks like the Corona Borealis on your arm."

That one startles her. "What?"

Clarke taps the arc of spots on Madi's forearm. "We all have that somewhere." She tugs the hem of her skirt up to display hers, and Madi's eyes go _huge_. She kneels down, holding her arm up next to Clarke's leg to compare. It's a feeling Clarke remembers, this thing that shouldn't have been a big deal, but it was _everything_. Somehow, the crown of stars was the one thing that she believed.

"Once you're twelve, your blood will look black, too. But just to other witches. Which is good, because that would be awkward to explain if you went to the hospital or something."

"What would you have done if I showed up and I wasn't a witch?"

"I wouldn't have told you I was one, but I wouldn't have sent you back either." 

Part of her wants to go on, to offer more reassurance, but she makes herself stop. She wants to believe that she wouldn't give up on this no matter what, but Madi is actually the expert here. She's been let down by more parental figures than Clarke's ever had; she's the expert on this.

"But you're sure, right? That I'm a witch."

"As sure as I can be before your twelfth birthday. I remember being really nervous," she offers. "Before mine. My birthday isn't until November, so I wasn't actually with Gram when it happened. She spent the summer getting me ready, and then I had two months of school wondering if she had just made the whole thing up."

"What was it like? When you did get your powers?"

"Nothing." 

Madi makes a face. "Nothing?"

"I was expecting fireworks or something, but I woke up feeling exactly the same. I was so scared it didn't happen, but Gram gave me a charm to check. It was supposed to glow when I touched it once I had my magic. I tried every day," she confesses with a smile. "For months before it was supposed to work. And every time it didn't, I thought I wasn't really a witch. But I am, obviously."

"Did you use your powers a lot?"

"As much as I could, which wasn't that much at first. Gram taught me a lot about plants and theory, but all the magic I could really do was good luck charms, focus potions, and tea that was supposed to make me sleep better. Which I think might have just been chamomile that she told me was magic."

That makes Madi smile. "So, what are you going to teach me?"

"To start? How to weed the garden and feed the chickens. And we'll go from there."

"Let me guess, witchcraft is all about hard work and responsibility," says Madi, but she doesn't really sound that upset.

"It is in our family." She smiles too, tries not to feel too giddy. It's going okay. Well, even. "Go to sleep. You have to get up early tomorrow."

"I know. For the chickens. Night, Clarke."

"Goodnight."

She doesn't text Bellamy to brag about how well it went. But it's a very close thing.

*

In the months between her grandmother's death and her finally getting Madi, Clarke fell into an easy routine in Eden. She woke up early--too early, but that's how it always is at Gram's house--to feed the chickens and collect eggs for breakfast. After, she'd check in on the garden, collect any herbs she might need, and brew a mug of strong, non-magical tea before settling in to work. Bellamy would call or stop by, depending on his mood and schedule, to remind her that food was good and she should eat it at some point, which she then would. More often than not, they ate together, and he'd stick around for video games or a movie or something.

It was a nice routine, and Madi chips away it only slowly, in easy steps that Clarke can't even bring herself to mind.

Mornings change first. Madi takes over taking care of the chickens, like Clarke hoped she would. She collects the eggs first and brings them into Clarke, so she can make breakfast while Madi is finishing up in the coop. They eat and then deal with the garden together, Clarke usually answering a few witch questions while they're doing that, with a more formal lesson after.

The change in work takes longer for her to notice. Madi takes off to hang out with Jordan and Gaia or sometimes Bellamy and/or his many pets, and Clarke has all her usual responsibilities, deadlines and conference calls and emails.

But part of her mind is always wandering to Madi.

"Yeah, that's just being a parent," Bellamy tells her. It's the last Saturday before school starts and Clarke is spending it at the farmer's market, helping Bellamy tend his shop in the unhelpful way where she does nothing and periodically steals sips of coffee from his canteen. "It gets worse before it gets better."

"Does it actually get better?"

Bellamy pauses the conversation to sell a cutting board. Most of his big business is online, doing custom furniture and some restorations, but he also makes some extra cash selling housewares on his website, in a few local stores, and at the farmer's market. She's pretty sure half the people who buy here are older locals convinced he'll starve without their support, but he's actually doing pretty well for himself.

"I no longer wonder where Octavia is every second of every day," he says, when he sits down again. 

"Just every hour?"

He shrugs. "I'm always going to worry, but that's more of an individual neurosis."

"It makes total sense," she reminds him. She's spent a lot of her life reminding Bellamy that, whether all his worrying over his sister is good or bad, it's certainly completely understandable, given how they grew up.

"Thanks. Anyway, school was worse for me than summer, which always seemed wrong. But there was so much more to worry about when school was in session."

"I don't think Madi's going to cut class because she started an amateur fight club."

"That just means that she's going to do something you haven't thought of yet."

"I know." She leans back, closing her eyes. "I feel like it's going too well? Almost a month and no major issues. Even _Anne of a Green Gables_ was getting into cute scrapes at this point."

"Well, you haven't really set a lot of rules yet. It's not a criticism," he adds, before she can protest. It's not like she _doesn't_ love rules. "You guys are feeling each other out. But she's going to push boundaries and you're going to have to figure out what to do."

"I know. Honestly, I think she still doesn't totally believe I'm keeping her. The animagus thing helped, but--"

Bellamy smiles at the use of their old code-word for all things magical, a balance of her small, domestic witchcraft and his nature powers. "But she's still a tourist for now. School should help with that too. Not that you can't get pulled out of school, but she has to commit to it while she's here. She'll have less time to do what she wants too."

"I still just feel like I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Yeah, you don't." She elbows him and he grins. "Just because you don't know what you're doing doesn't mean you're bad at it. You guys seem pretty okay so far."

" _Pretty okay_ isn't exactly what I was hoping for."

"It's a way better place to start than _disaster_ ," he points out, not unreasonably. "Would a kitten help?"

"Are they ready to leave their mom?"

"Not quite, but Madi and her friends are coming to visit them after this, so you might as well come too. They're out of the loft and running into everything all the time."

In terms of giant dick moves from the universe, Clarke can't help thinking that Bellamy being supernaturally good with animals is right up there. It's not enough that he's hot and smart and good, kittens also love him and want to climb all over him while he pretends to hate it.

If she had any sense, she wouldn't go witness this in person, but there's no way. It's another important part of her routine: hanging out with Bellamy against her better judgement.

The kids are waiting for them when they get back, playing fetch with Maximus while some cats--at least two of whom are strays who just stopped by for food and to complain to Bellamy about their many feline woes--lounge in the sun.

It's a nice afternoon, warm and easy, and if this is a regular part of her life, Clarke won't mind at all. She could do this a lot.

Instead, Bellamy jinxed her, and things go off course the next morning when Madi asks, "So do we like fight stuff or what?"

"Sorry?"

"Are there bad witches? Warlocks? Wizards? Do we have enemies? Are we protecting the world from something?"

It's a question she was expecting eventually, one she asked herself when she was Madi's age. That's part of every story about (good) kids who get magical powers; every school year, there's a new greatest evil they have to face, another big bad stalking their every move. 

Reality is, of course, simpler and more complicated.

"There are bad people," she says. "I assume some of them have powers. But it's not like what you're thinking. We don't have some big alliance of witches working against evil. It's just you and anyone you know, doing what you can."

"What you can about what?" Madi asks.

"Gram always said it was about setting things right. Things that shouldn't be."

"You're still not answering the question. What are you fighting?"

"It's not just one thing. It's--you know how I said magic was like a friend?"

"Yeah."

"Not all magic is friendly. And not everyone knows what to do with magic if it starts talking to them. So--" She sighs, gives up. "Bellamy and I became friends because there was this stray dog that got magic and we could both tell it was _wrong_. I was expecting him to just blow me off, but he thought it was weird too."

Madi huffs. "Okay but _how_ was it wrong? If I see something like that, I should be ready, right? I have to know what it is and find you."

It's bullshit, and Clarke knows it. As soon as Madi knows what she's looking for, she'll find it in no time. That's how it works, knowing about magic. When magic isn't real, you don't explain anything with magic, but as soon as you know it's real, it's the answer to every question you didn't know you had. 

If she doesn't tell Madi the truth, it might actually be worse. It's not like she's not going to go looking for trouble no matter what.

"It's an aura. I'd never--Gram told me about what it would be like, it was one of her first lessons. And it was going to be one of yours too, I just hadn't figured it out yet. It's kind of like--trying to describe a taste or a smell to someone who's never tasted it or smelled it. Or tasted or smelled _anything_. There's a pressure and a feeling, but it's mostly just--something's wrong. Bellamy called it a spidey sense. He only has it for animals, and it's different from mine, I guess. I feel the magic, he feels the wrongness with the animal."

"Why did you ask him? Why not your grandmother?"

She smiles. "Because I didn't want her to think I couldn't handle it. Which was stupid, don't do that. I thought I had to be the best witch ever or Gram would be disappointed. She was a lot more disappointed that I didn't come to her, so--"

"I'm not saying I wouldn't tell you, don't worry. Did the dog attack you?"

"No, it never actually came close. It just used to wait at the end of the street for me, and then it would always--it was just close enough I could feel its magic pressing in. It was so creepy."

"So what did you do? Like, to stop it?"

"Eventually? Talked to Gram. Once Bellamy admitted he could talk to most dogs but couldn't get through to this one, we realized the whole thing was above our pay grade. She taught me a more powerful banishing spell and Bellamy got the dog to hold still long enough for us to use it."

"What did you do when bad stuff happened and you weren't here? When you couldn't ask her?"

"Tried to figure it out on my own, and then with Bellamy, and then he'd ask my grandmother if it came to that. It wasn't _good_ ," she adds. "I look back at how I was as a kid and I don't know why I didn't just talk to her right away."

"Did it happen a lot?"

"Not a lot. Every couple months. And sometimes it was nothing. It was never the world ending or anything. Just--I think there's magic all over, and witches can talk to it. But sometimes magic tries to talk to something that doesn't know its language, and that's a problem. It's usually not dangerous, just--translation errors."

"I still don't think I get it," she grumbles, and Clarke smiles. 

"I'm not great at explaining it. It's different every time, and we still don't really know how it works. But it's mostly just--a responsibility. Stuff to set right, I guess. And that's something we're going to teach you too. But for now," she says, dragging the lesson back on target, "we're just doing charms."

*

"I can't believe you didn't have a better answer ready for that," Bellamy teases, when she calls him that night.

"I was hoping if I made it sound really low key, she'd think it was just domestic stuff."

"It's not like that's not most of it. Even the bad stuff is mostly domestic. Like that poltergeist you had."

Clarke groans. "Don't remind me."

"Hey, it wanted to help."

"It wanted to put me in danger and then rescue me so I'd reward it with ghost sex. Which I'm not sure we could even have, honestly."

"Did you tell Madi about that? I assume that's a good way to make the whole thing seem shitty."

"I just told her about that dog that was following me around in high school."

"Doubles as an origin story for us, I guess. I still can't believe you came to me."

Clarke has to smile. "You were the only person I knew who actually dealt with strays following you around on a regular basis." She pauses. "You're still the only person I know like that."

"Someone's got to do it. You want me to see if I can find some boring evil to deal with?"

"What were you thinking?"

"I don't know. She doesn't have powers yet, so nothing will be looking for her. That makes it less personal. And that means she can't sense anything on her own either. If I can find--another haunting or something, just an annoyance, she'll see it's not that much more exciting than your cooking charms. Just more of the same stuff."

"That's actually not a bad idea," she admits. "If you can find something."

"I'll keep an eye open. I know you're busy."

Her chest surges with fondness. "I feel like I haven't thanked you enough. I'd be doing so much worse without you."

"What else is new?"

"I'm doing a lesson on general bad stuff tomorrow, do you want to come over for it?"

"Yeah. And if you send me the lesson plan, I'll even take a look at it."

"You're the best."

"I am, thanks for noticing. What time tomorrow? School starts Tuesday, right? Are you rescheduling lessons yet?"

"Maybe I should. We could do after dinner? So any time you help out with teaching, you get a free meal."

"And you get me to help out with cooking. But yeah, that works. See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah. Thanks again."

"No problem."

Bellamy was the first person on her to-call list, and by far the easiest. Since she's moved back to Eden, her relationship with Bellamy has improved, but most everything else is still rocky. She and Wells are as solid as ever, but they've always had an odd kind of solidity. She can go for weeks or months without talking to Wells, but when they do, it's like no time has passed. With her friends in the city, it's more complicated, pricklier. They're mostly people she went to college with, the ones she fell out of touch with while she was dating Lexa, and while she didn't like how isolated it made her feel, she also found she didn't really miss most of those people.

Clarke's never been great with friends, if she's honest. And now that she's got a kid, it's even more awkward. 

But she has Bellamy, and she's making friends with some people who live here, too. Miller and Emori from high school are still living fairly close and cool enough, and Jordan's dad can relate to the _young with a kid_ part of her life. She and Raven still talk too, so she just texts her-- _kids are exhausting_ \--and sends the same message to Roan and Murphy, for good measure.

Then she sucks it up and calls her mother.

Clarke's relationship with her mother is a little like her relationship with Wells, except that she feels bad about it. Somehow, even though Abby never calls her either, it's always Clarke's fault for being out of touch, always Clarke who's at fault. Calling her mother always ends with her feeling like a dick for not calling her mother sooner, but never enough that she wants to do it more often. Just enough that there's nothing she can do that doesn't make her feel like an asshole.

She should have called Abby first and finished with Bellamy. That would have been smarter. He could have been a reward.

"Clarke!" she says, sounding pleased. "It's good to hear from you, honey. But I'm sure you're busy with--Mary, was it?"

"Madison," Clarke corrects. "Madi."

"Madi. How's she settling in?"

Sometimes, Clarke wonders if she'd be closer to her mother if Abby knew about the magic. If they could talk about Clarke's powers, would they be less awkward? Or would that be just one more thing that Abby would ask about when they talked and forget about the rest of the time? It feels a chicken-and-egg thing by now, impossible to figure out if the witchcraft came first or the distance. If she'd trusted her mother more, maybe she wouldn't have kept the secret in the first place.

It's pointless to wonder about; she just rubs her face and plasters on a smile, like Abby will be able to see her, somehow.

"It's slow going. She's had a lot of families before this, so I think it's going to be a while before she warms up to me."

"You know you don't have to do this."

 _So you keep telling me_ , she thinks, but doesn't say it. "I know. I want to."

"It's just a lot of responsibility. And foster children--especially older ones--often have behavioral problems. I'm not sure you're--"

Her patience snaps. "We had this conversation, remember? Before I got her. I know how you feel about this, and I made my decision. It's done, and you need to stop talking about it."

There's a long pause, and Clarke lets it stretch, waiting for Abby to finally say, "You're right. You made your choice, and I hope it works out."

The _I'm sure it won't_ lingers in the air, but Clarke doesn't respond to that part.

"Me too. She's a good kid, so far. Already making friends. Bellamy's giving her a kitten, too."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"It would be nice to have a pet. And I think it might make her feel more at home here. More connections, or whatever."

"Mmhmm."

It's the best response she could realistically hope for, so she doesn't push her luck. "How's work?" she asks instead, and lets her mother's words wash over her like water, a comfortable kind of background noise. Abby always has some sort of hospital politics to complain about, and Clarke doesn't need to say much.

Not until she says, "I assume you'll be staying in Eden for Thanksgiving."

"That was the plan. It's a long flight, and Madi doesn't have a much of a break. But we should be down there for Christmas."

Abby hums. She lives halfway down the coast, which is a good excuse for Clarke to not see her very often. Massachusetts, be it Eden or Boston, has always been a place for to feel completely independent of her parents. "I was thinking I could come to you."

Her heart stops. "To us?"

"New England is supposed to be pretty in autumn."

"Not in November, the leaves are all gone."

"Do you not want me to come?"

It's a loaded question if she's ever heard one. "You can if you want, but I know it's hard for you to take time off. And if you come, you have to be nice to Madi. None of this--"

"Of course. I wouldn't say any of that to her."

"Then, yeah, you're welcome to come. Just let me know."

They say their goodbyes and Clarke leans back, eyes closed. It would be nice if she thought Madi might have a grandmother. Not the kind she had, really, or not the kind Gram was; that kind of closeness requires a shared secret. But she and Nana, her mother's mother, got along well enough. Madi could use someone like that.

Madi could use so many more people than Clarke can give her. But she can try.

 _Hey, you want to facetime soon? Meet my new kid?_ she texts Wells, and his immediate _Yes obviously????_ lifts her mood.

She's not great at this, she'll be the first to admit. But she's getting better.

*

Considering _she_ isn't the one in school, Clarke is surprisingly exhausted at the end of Madi's first week. As Bellamy predicted, she's way more stressed by Madi being in school than she was by her running around the neighborhood, a combination of her not being accessible and Clarke having no way of knowing how things were going. So many things can go _wrong_ in school, and Madi probably won't tell her if she's struggling.

The good news is, it's about the best-case scenario for a foster kid starting in a new place. Eden's school district just restructured, and sixth grade is now the first year of middle school, not the last year of elementary. Instead of having an awkward year as the new kid in a class where everyone else has known each other for years, she's one of many starting at the larger joint middle/high school, which brings together five local towns. It's still going to be a smaller school than Madi was used to in the cities she's lived in, but at least she's not the only one going through a transition. 

And from what she's told Clarke, she's doing all right. She has a couple classes each with Jordan and Gaia and she's meeting new people on top of that. She goes upstairs and does her homework every night with no argument, and she still gets up early enough to tend the chickens before the bus comes.

On Friday night, after four days of school, _she_ has enough energy to say, "Can we go to Jordan's dad's store and play games instead of witch lessons tonight?" because somehow she isn't ready to immediately collapse into a boneless pile for the entire weekend like Clarke is.

"You want to skip witch lessons?" she asks, as surprised by that as she is by the idea that they might leave the house. Witch lessons are Madi's favorite part of the day.

"I told Jordan I might need to do something with you tonight and he told me to just bring you. I think he was horrified that you'd keep me inside on a Friday night."

"Some people socialize on weekends," Bellamy puts in. 

"Don't act like you're speaking from experience, you spend weekends working and reading under a pile of cats."

He shrugs, unconcerned. "I never said _I_ socialized on weekends."

"You can come play games too, you know. You're invited."

"If you're not doing lessons, I don't have anything else to do."

The three of them walk over together, Madi setting a brisk pace while she and Bellamy follow a little more slowly. Clarke knows Madi goes to the game store with some regularity, but she's never been, and there's an anxious flutter in her chest she can't quite press down.

Living in the witch house, it's easy to believe you don't belong. Kids still think she's a myth. And she likes Monty and Jasper, but she usually lets them come to her. This feels like imposing, even though she's going to a place of business to spend money.

Plus, if she's going to be a witch anywhere, the game store is probably a good place to do it. Monty and Jasper have done a nice job with it, making it clean and inviting, but their decoration still tends towards "ren faire threw up in a basement."

In a nice way.

The bell over the door jangles as Madi pushes it open, and everyone in the store jerks up at the sound. Jordan and Gaia are at a table with a few other kids, all of whom grin and wave at Madi as she runs over. The other tables are, not to stereotype, mostly college-aged nerdy boys. Jasper is among them, participating in whatever card game they're playing, whole Monty mans the register with as much enthusiasm as he can muster. He's told Clarke before that running a game store is as much about community as sales, and while she believes it, she assumes they still need sales, and they don't seem to be selling anything right now.

But Monty perks up and smiles, looking pleased to see them. "Hey! Madi said you were coming, but I honestly didn't believe her."

"We're supposed to be social," says Bellamy, leaning on the counter. Clarke remembers when Monty first moved to town, a cute young guy with a cute young kid. Jealousy had clawed its way up her throat, irrational and pointless, but she'd swallowed it down fast. She dated, the same as Bellamy did, and if he found someone, it would be good for him.

Nothing ever came of it, though, and she was always guiltily glad.

"That's new for you. Did you have a socialization plan?"

"Madi looks set," says Clarke, glancing over at her. "So no."

"Yeah, Jordan is DMing for the first time."

"I know that's a sex thing," says Bellamy. "Right? DMs? Twitter sex?"

"You're not that much older than I am, how are you like this?" Monty asks. "He's running a Dungeons and Dragons game."

"Yeah, we don't want in on that. What else have you got?"

"How do you feel about colonialism?" Monty asks Clarke.

"It's shitty?"

"Just checking. I've been wanting to make Bellamy play Spirit Island, you're fighting colonizers. It's pretty awesome."

"Yeah, you don't have to make me play that," says Bellamy. "I want five copies already."

Monty grins. "I thought so. Come over here, I'll set you up with the demo copy."

It takes a while for the creeping wrongness to fully settle into Clarke's consciousness, her magic trying and failing to get her attention as she focuses on Monty's long explanation of rules, and by the time she and Bellamy are playing, it's gone from a tingle to a tug to a throb in her temple.

"Oh fuck," she breathes.

"It's the first round, we'll get better," says Bellamy, absent. He's good at finding paranormal activity, but he can't sense it. He just reads a lot of newspaper and has figured out the euphemisms that tend to indicate the presence of magic. "I know you hate losing, but--"

"Spidey sense," she says.

The blood drains from his face. "Here?"

"Yeah." 

"Can you narrow it down?"

"Not without drawing a lot of attention. And I need to do some prep work. We probably can't do anything until tomorrow night, at the earliest." She worries her lip. "Is teaching an eleven-year-old how to use magic to break and enter cool?"

"She's almost twelve. You want to bring her?"

"I think if I don't bring her and she finds out, she'll never trust me again. I'm not thrilled about it, but if there's something to see, she should see it."

"Yeah, you're probably right." He smirks. "And we're breaking in?"

"It's either that or explaining to Monty."

"When you put it like that, yeah." He sighs. "But we can finish the game first, right?"

Clarke smiles. "Obviously. It's not like we can break in yet."

*

"How do you know we're the good guys?" Madi asks.

It's not a bad question, given they're the ones sneaking through the deserted streets, on high alert for anyone passing by as they make their way to break into their friend's store. It doesn't feel much like heroism, right this minute.

It is, it just doesn't feel like it.

"His store is basically haunted," says Clarke. "Getting rid of the ghost is helping."

"But Monty seems fine. So how do we know it's a bad ghost? Maybe the witch magic is bad, and it's telling you to get rid of good magic that's trying to help people."

Clarke glances at Bellamy, hoping for some backup. They spent all of their Saturday preparing for this, Clarke showing Madi all the things they'd need and teaching her how to make everything that didn't directly relate to breaking and entering, and Madi had been uncharacteristically quiet. Her (foolish) assumption had been that finally getting to do _exciting_ witchcraft had stopped the flood of questions, but apparently she was just biding her time.

"I'm not an expert," Bellamy says. "But from what I've seen, magic isn't good or bad. It's more like--if there was a raccoon stuck in Monty's basement. We wouldn't want to get it out of there because it's evil or anything, we would get it out because it shouldn't be there, and having it there is dangerous for everyone."

Clarke shoots him a grateful smile. "That's a good way of putting it. It's not that the magic is necessarily hurting anyone right now, and it might never. But Monty doesn't know about it and can't talk to it, so it's not safe for it to be around."

"He might accidentally piss it off," Madi says, nodding.

"Exactly. But we don't always have to get rid of the magic. Gram used to say the first step was talking to it. If it wants to hang out with Monty, that can happen. We just have to make sure it's safe."

"Like taking in a stray cat," Bellamy adds, since the metaphor seemed to be working.

"Would you tell Monty?"

"We'd try not to. It's easier to keep it secret, even if you trust the person. And Monty can't do anything about it, really, so it's better to just--not mention it."

Madi thinks this over for a moment as they walk, and Clarke can't help doing it too. Keeping witchcraft a secret was always something she felt, deep in her soul. The stories she was raised on taught her not to talk about it long before her grandmother did, long before she knew it was real. Superheroes, witches, wizards, anyone _different_ : all of them kept their powers a secret. 

Bellamy had once pointed out that it was a narrative necessity. It was the summer before she went to college, when she was fretting about going to a new place and making new friends and keeping more secrets.

"If you're writing a story that's supposed to be in our universe, magic has to be a secret, because we don't know about it," he explained, tapping his book. It had been on one of their many library trips.

"But it's true, too. We do keep it secret."

"Yeah, but maybe it doesn't have to be anymore. Maybe you could tell people and it would be fine. Maybe people are less superstitious now."

"Some people are," she said. "Some people think _Harry Potter_ is dangerous because it promotes witchcraft."

"Which is totally wrong. It's not like _Harry Potter_ promotes the idea you can make yourself a witch or wizard if you're not. If anything, it tells all kids who didn't get letters from a magic school at age eleven that they're totally ordinary."

She loved him then too, with a small, wistful ache. Something that felt like nostalgia even as it was happening, something she knew couldn't last.

"So it's really anti-witch propaganda."

"It tells kids to not even try." He smiled at her. "I'm not saying you can't tell people, but--I'm not planning to. I don't see a lot of pros, and the cons are real. But I probably would tell someone, if I didn't have you."

It's something Clarke has thought of every time she thinks of telling someone else. If she's honest, being a witch isn't a huge part of her life, not nearly as much as being a druid or whatever is part of Bellamy's. It so rarely feels like something she's _not_ telling someone, in the same way she doesn't think she needs to disclose that she's left handed or that she doesn't eat seafood. But she knows too that it's like being bisexual; if someone found out she hadn't told them about her powers, they would see it as a sign she didn't trust them. And they'd be right, in a way, it just would be a lot more about _her_ than them.

Mostly, though, she has Bellamy to talk to about it, which means she doesn't need anyone else. Not unless she were to lose him.

"We'd tell Monty if he needed to do anything, right?" Madi finally asks. "If he was in danger."

"We'd figure something out," says Clarke, careful.

"Honestly, usually not bringing the magic thing into it is easier to swallow," Bellamy adds, a little absent. They've gotten to the street and he's on high alert now; this is the part where they don't want to be seen.

Clarke swipes her thumb over the charm in her pocket, waking her magic up. It can't make them invisible, not exactly, but it can make eyes glide over them, make people driving by not look twice. 

It's not one of the tricks she's teaching Madi yet. Twelve is a little young to be going around inconspicuous and overconfident.

"Magic is a lot to explain, yeah," says Clarke. "Quiet now?" 

"As much as possible." He leans down to scratch the cat who's following them, one of the strays. "He'll howl if there's a problem."

"You guys are really good at this," Madi mutters. "Like, creepy good."

Clarke can't really deny that. The first time they had to break in somewhere and try to remove a magical aura, it had been a disaster. Clarke had messed up her charms, the cat Bellamy picked for a lookout had been a flake, and they ended up pretending they were just dumb teenagers looking for a place to hook up to keep from getting arrested.

These days, they're a lot better at it. Clarke has charms to turn off alarms, to unlock doors, to find cameras and disable them, and Bellamy is a better judge of animal character. And this shouldn't be that challenging--Monty's security is pretty minimal--but there's no reason to get sloppy. Clarke would definitely lose custody of Madi if anyone found them committing a crime.

She would probably deserve to.

She tracks the magic to the basement, which at least makes logistics easier--no windows, no way for anyone on the street to see them--but as soon as they open the door, Clarke is hit with foreign magic like a blow, the scent so thick in the air it seems like she should be able to see it.

"Holy shit," she breathes.

"What?" asks Bellamy, eyes alert. "You okay?"

"This is--strong."

"Strong?" asks Madi, at the same time Bellamy says, "Should we go?"

Clarke shakes her head, less as a response and more in an attempt to get her mind clear. "Give me a second. It's--god, it's like fog. I can't believe you guys can't feel it. I can't believe I didn't notice the second I walked in."

Madi's looking around, as if she thinks she will feel it if she tries hard enough. "What do we do now?"

Clarke's vision is starting to go dark at the edges, pressure bearing down on every inch of her. "Bellamy, do you have your warding talisman?" 

He doesn't bother responding, just pulls it out and presses his thumb between two marks on the front, forming a bridge between them. It wouldn't work if he wasn't standing right next to her, but her magic sees the glyph he's completed with his finger, reads her desire, and rears up, pushing the foreign magic away, encasing the three of them in a bubble of clean air.

Clarke takes in a few grateful lungfuls before she says, "I don't know what this is."

"This isn't normal?" Madi asks. She looks anxious now, and Clarke can't blame her. She and Bellamy were playing it cool about the whole thing, reminding her that this was routine, boring even.

Of course their first non-routine call in years would be Madi's first call ever. Instead of keeping her expectations in check, they put them way too low. Now, it's scary, and Madi wasn't prepared at all.

"It's not," says Clarke, seeing no reason to lie to her now. "This is new and not great."

"What was it doing to you?" Bellamy asks, eyes sharp. "Are you okay?"

"I've been better. I don't think it was trying to hurt me."

"No?"

In almost twenty years of being a witch, Clarke's developed some decent instincts, an innate sense of what magic wants from her. And this magic is--

"I think it's lonely," she says, slow. "It was so happy to see me it got carried away. What was here before Monty opened the store? Do you remember?"

"Video rental?" he offers, making a face. "They limped along for a while on community goodwill and then it was empty for a few years until Monty moved in. I think."

"That sounds right, yeah. Gram never would have come in, and I didn't either since she didn't have a TV. So we wouldn't have known anything was trapped here. It's just been hanging out in the basement, not talking to anyone."

"And it knows you can talk to it?" Madi asks.

"Yeah." She takes a breath, goes the rest of the way down the stairs. "Okay, Bellamy, stop the ward."

"You sure?"

"If I need it back, I'll tell you."

Bellamy doesn't look happy, but he does break the connection on the warding glyph. The magic rushes back in, but it stops a breath away, giving her space to get used to it.

"It's weird your magic doesn't always protect you," Madi says, her composure recovered enough to use logic again. "Like, how can the other magic get close if your magic is already there?"

"It's magic, it doesn't have to follow our rules," says Clarke.

"So you don't know."

"No idea." She glances at Bellamy. "Can you see where it's tethered?"

"Working on it."

"Are we going to send it away?" Madi asks. "If it's lonely--"

"We're going to find the tether and see if we can talk to it," says Clarke.

 _Tether_ is what she and Bellamy call it; Clarke doesn't know if there's an official name somewhere in Gram's books, but tether works. She's the tether for her own magic, what it follows, what grounds it. This magic is tethered to something in this basement, something it can't leave and probably wants to.

Even if it doesn't want to leave forever, it probably wants to get out of the basement for a little while.

The basement has some overflow stock in it, but Clarke can't imagine the magic is tethered to anything Monty and Jasper brought in. It's so thick down here, it must have been stuck for a long time. "It's probably something from the video place, if not whatever was here before that. It'll be old and dusty and forgotten."

"I can't believe we're looking for a haunted VCR," says Bellamy.

"A haunted what?" asks Madi.

"Something that would have been here when this was a video rental store," says Clarke, absent. "It doesn't have to be a VCR, it can be anything. A candy bar, a toy, a DVD--"

"If magic could be anything, why would it be a DVD?"

"No idea," says Clarke.

"I still think stuff like this is ghosts," says Bellamy. "The magic really loved _A League of Their Own_ when it was alive, so--"

Clarke has to smile. "That's your go-to?"

"If I was going to haunt a movie it would be that. Or _Thor: Ragnarok_."

"That checks out." She frowns at the far corner of the basement, darker than the rest, dusty with disuse. "Probably there."

"Obviously in the creepiest part of the basement," he grumbles. "You okay, Madi?"

Her smile is tight. "Okay's a good word for it."

"You guys can go upstairs, I'll be fine down here."

Both Madi and Bellamy look at her like she's grown another head, eerily similar expressions for two people who aren't related and barely know each other. It's actually kind of cute.

"Or not," she says. "Let's go."

Magic can distort things, especially for people who aren't witches. Clarke thinks it's a defense mechanism, something like camouflage. Clarke can see it, but she sees through it too, knows that the way the hallway stretches and twists is essentially special effects.

"Definitely back here," she tells Madi. "The way things are stretching out and warping? That's to keep people away."

"I thought it wanted you to find it."

She considers. "It's like Bellamy said, it's pretty much a trapped animal. It wants to get out, but it's still afraid. We need to move slowly and make sure it's not threatened. Once we're close enough, I'll start talking to it."

"Does it speak the same language as your magic?"

All the questions are giving her a little bit of a headache, but they're good for Madi to ask. Knowledge is power, or whatever. And if it keeps her from being scared, Clarke will answer every question she's got. "It does, but I don't speak that language. Witch magic is bilingual, I guess. I talk to it, and then it talks to the wild magic."

"How do you know it's saying what you want it to? What if you're trying to be nice and your magic is an asshole?"

"If Clarke's magic is an asshole, we have to assume it's for a good reason," Bellamy says, and Clarke shoots him a grateful smile. It's even better if _he_ answers every question Madi's got. "We don't get in a lot of fights, so it's probably less of an asshole than Clarke."

"Thanks." Her eyes pick out a shape in the dark, and she finds herself smiling. "I think I see the tether."

"What is it?"

She shines the flashlight and Bellamy groans at the sight of a small, old, dusty, and _very_ gross Furby. "Seriously?"

"I bet you."

"Magic needs to get better taste. I can't imagine spending decades hanging out with a Furby. Even a nice Furby."

"Maybe it used to be a good place to be. Like it was a favorite toy that got lost."

"So do we just take it out?" Madi asks. "Free it?"

"We talk to it first, see what it wants. If it likes being stationary, we could get it into a better tether, a tree or something. If it used to move, we could find it an animal. Or we could untether it."

"Isn't it bad to be tethered to an animal? Like that dog that was following you when you were a kid."

"It depends on how it's tethered," Bellamy says, picking up so Clarke can focus on communicating with the magic. "It's, uh--basically it's all a translation issue. I couldn't talk to the dog because the magic had taken over. But magic doesn't have to take over, like it doesn't with Clarke. Once her grandmother was talking to the magic, I could talk to the dog, and we got everyone on the same page."

"Did the magic stay with the dog?"

"Yeah. They're friends."

"Is the dog Maximus?"

Clarke can hear the smile in Bellamy's voice, even as she's busy with glyphs, telling her magic to ask this magic what it wants, watching the glyphs light up as her magic passes along the responses. _Fresh air_ and _activity_ are the big things; it's been alone and cooped up for too long.

"That would be cute, but no. I don't keep any animals tethered to magic; they tend to have trouble getting along with other animals. They're not exactly smarter than regular animals, but the magic changes them."

"I think this one needs an animal," Clarke says, glancing over her shoulder. "How's the cat keeping watch for us?"

"Might work," he says. "Get the magic to follow us home and we can do introductions. And untether it," he adds. "There's no fucking way I'm touching that Furby."

The magic agrees and they go to Bellamy's, on the grounds that if the cat they have with them isn't appealing, one of the other animals hanging around probably will be. Despite her best efforts to see the whole thing through, Madi passes out on the couch during negotiations, and it's almost two a.m. by the time they finally get the magic tethered to a passing owl who came to see what all the commotion was.

Clarke slumps back. "So much for showing Madi it's boring."

"Hey, it _was_ boring. She fell asleep. It's not like serving as a translator in a conversation between a nebulous magical force and a bunch of animals is very flashy or glamorous."

"I guess not." She wets her lips. "I assume we're sleeping over."

"I figured, yeah. I'll get the loft set up."

"Madi seems fine on the couch."

"I meant for me. You can have the bed."

It's their usual thing, on the rare occasions when she sleeps over. It would be the smart thing, especially with Madi here. But it's so late, and she's so worn out, and Bellamy must be too. He looks frayed around the edges.

So she says, "Don't bother, we can just share the bed."

"It's no trouble."

"It is. You have to climb up there, unpack the futon, put it out--seriously, I'm getting tired just thinking about it. There's plenty of room in the bed."

"Spoken like someone who doesn't know how many cats are going to be on there," he says, but it's not a protest. He loans her a shirt to sleep in, like he always does, and she finds the spare toothbrush, and they jostle the protesting cats around enough that they can get under the covers.

"That went okay, right?" he asks, into the silence.

"I think so."

"You're doing fine, Clarke."

She smiles. "Yeah. I think I am."

*

When Clarke leaves Bellamy's room the next morning, after (sadly) absolutely no cuddling or funny business of any kind, Madi is already awake, sitting on the floor with a ribbon, tugging it for the kittens to pounce on. She didn't really think she'd be lucky enough that Madi was still asleep, but she still feels like a shitty parent. Which, if you think about it, is definitely fucked up purity culture at work, because even if she _had_ fucked Bellamy last night, it wouldn't be worse or more irresponsible than taking Madi along on breaking-and-entering witchcraft adventures.

If she is a shitty parent, it's definitely not because she shared a bed with her best friend last night. But she still thinks she's doing fine, given the circumstances. 

"Hey, morning," she says.

"Morning," says Madi.

"Are you hungry?"

"Not very."

"Okay, then I'm waiting for Bellamy to wake up and he can cook." She gets the coffee going and then sits down next to Madi. There are three kittens playing with her, two torties and the black and gold one Bellamy likes, and she has to admit they're really cute. "Which one is yours?"

She worries her lip, but doesn't protest. "This one." She strokes its head, and the kitten arches into it.

"Cucurbita, right?"

"Yeah."

"She should be ready for us to take home soon."

"Honestly, you could probably take her today," says Bellamy. When Clarke turns he's leaning against the door, watching them with warm eyes, and her stupid heart flips over.

She's going to have to deal with this sooner or later. It's not sustainable in the long term.

"Really?" asks Madi.

He sits down and, as always, a crowd of cats comes to join him. The torties stay with her and Madi, though, and he smirks. "I think you have to take both."

"Both?"

On cue--probably _actually_ on cue, probably Bellamy told her to--the other kitten climbs onto Clarke. "They're close. And they like you guys. We shouldn't separate them."

"What is with you and giving away cats?"

"If you had as many cats as I do, you'd be trying to give them away too."

The kitten _is_ cute. And Madi looks pretty excited. "If you make breakfast, I'll take the cat."

"Deal," he says. "Pancakes okay?"

"Sounds good to me. Madi?"

"Yeah." She worries her lip. "What happened to the magic from last night? Where did it go?"

Bellamy pulls himself up and goes over to the kitchen to start cooking. "It's tethered to an owl now."

"An owl?"

"It got used to being in the dark, so nocturnal is good. And it wanted to be high up and in the air. I think it should be happy."

"And that was--it wasn't normal, what happened? It's not how bad magic usually is."

"It was a lot more exciting than usual. Usually it's just, like--a poltergeist knocking stuff over and we tell it to stop."

"Well, we call it a poltergeist," says Clarke. "But it's all just magic, as far as we know."

"And magic _could_ just be ghosts. That's what you said, right?"

Bellamy shrugs. "It's magic, it could be anything. It might as well be ghosts. Come help me with this."

They tell her more stories about magic they've dealt with over the years, problems they've had to solve, and by the time they're finished with breakfast and ready to leave, Clarke actually feels pretty okay about the whole thing. Madi's cautious but not scarred, which is probably for the best; she'll take things seriously, but not be paralyzed with terror about magic smothering her in her sleep. The magic is happy, Monty's store will have a less weird aura, and she and Madi are getting kittens. And it's Sunday, so Madi still has time to get her homework done. They can take care of the chickens and weed the garden and get back to their routine.

A weird night or two can be a part of that routine. This can be a good life.

"What should I name her?" she asks Madi, picking up her kitten as they get ready to head back home. "What goes with pumpkin?"

"Spice," says Madi, automatic, and Clarke has to smile.

"Perfect. Bellamy?"

"You know all I do is feed these words into google translate, right? You could do it yourself."

"You're the expert."

"It's giving me some options. I'd go with Aroma or Conditura, the others aren't as easy to say."

"Cucurbita and Conditura," says Clarke. "Those sound like sisters, right?" She smirks at Bellamy. "They sound like _your_ sisters."

"Hey, Octavia thinks her name is cool and unique now. She came around."

"I like those names," says Madi, and that's obviously the end of it, all that really matters. 

Bellamy comes with them to bring the kittens home so he can give them a stern talking to about not bothering the chickens, so it's the three of them (plus two kittens and two of the older cats who are just bored) walking back through the woods. It doesn't feel quite like fall yet, the chill only just snaking into the air, the leaves still mostly green. But it's sunny and the sky is blue and Condita is riding on her shoulder, purring up a storm. They got through Madi's first big magical encounter, and it went pretty well.

Things are fine, with the possibility of getting better. With the possibility of being _good_.

There are worse places to be than that on a Sunday morning. She'll take it.


End file.
